Final Project: Faculty In-Service Training on Web 2.0

My final project is a prezi (innovative online presentation tool) of how to teach with Web 2.0 tools. This prezi will be presented as my Faculty In-Service Training in either February, April, or June 2010. I used much pre-work from our class, from continuing all term to develop my bubbl.us project outline to incorporating many of the mini-projects developed for weekly assignments. Before I summarize my presentation, I want to stress how crucial Rick's audio feedback from my blog was to the final development of this project. He stressed, as did the literature this term, that these tools need a purpose. Rick reminded me that--rather than just teach teachers to use these tools--I need to stress why they would consider using them. While I had already thematized the tools into my presentation's major headings, I had not included in my early drafts any justification for using web 2.0 in the classroom. I hope you will find, in the full version of my presentation and below, good reasons to use these tools in class!

Major Categories of My Presentation
To distill all the tools we've learned into what can be applied in my two-year career college context, I had to consider:

• My college's job-placement mission
  
• The college's technological capabilities/limitations
  
• How to motivate faculty to want to use these tools
• Which tools would both simplify teachers' lives and benefit their students (what we call synergies)

Here is what I came up with.

Introduction: The presentation begins by contrasting web 1.0 (the read web) with web 2.0 (the read-write web). Here are the presentation's main points:

Organizing the Web: To make searching the web for teaching materials easier, I introduce for faculty:

• Google Reader (aggregator): Using the analogy of how they previously got their information through subscriptions, I show how the reader saves time by bringing their preferred content to them. I show a common craft video on RSS in Plain English. We actually sign up for google reader using a webcast I made and hosted on Netfiles with a public setting (i.e. you can use it too). Then we subscribe to RSS feeds in several different media categories (i.e. news sites, blogs, etc.). I stress the major hurdle is getting into the habit of visiting your reader on a regular basis.
  
• Diigo: I introduce common pitfalls of bookmarking to a local machine (i.e. you bookmark to your home computer but find yourself at school needing the link) and show how diigo is a solution. The presentation shows them a diigo video from youtube that we watched in class. I have set up a diigo group for my faculty (including establishing all their usernames and passwords), and I will have them join during the presentation. I also emphasize how diigo allows users to interact with pages (highlight and annotate) and how they can share pages with others.
  

Blogs: I describe 3 potential ways teachers might use blogs:

1. For finding material (1) about their course subjects and (2) about teaching. I stress that they can both consume and contribute information.
2. Having students blog to (1) journal about their learning; (2) reflect on course material; (3) create e-portfolios; and/or (4) post drafts of writing for each other to critique. I include an example I found through a blog search, plus an e-portfolio blog I made for this class.
   
3. For posting assignments and due dates. I present an example found in a blog search.
   

The blog section ends with a screencast I made, uploaded to youtube, and embedded in the presentation. The screencast has faculty use their google account created earlier in the training to sign up for a blogger blog.

Collaboration and Group Work: I present 2 additional tools for facilitating the participatory aspects of the read-write web:

• Wikis: I describe wikis as the epitome of web 2.0 (based on the wikipedia model) and also the most misunderstood (again, based on popular maligning of wikipedia). I share a diigo-annotated article that blasts popular wiki myths. I also share a real company's wiki that works great for its purpose, and I showcase the wiki I started as our weekly class assignment that is now morphing into a real class wiki that goes live Jan. 4, 2010!
• Ning: I describe how Ning shares many of the features of blogs (asynchronous posting) but also allows for synchronous chat. I created a ning for the in-service that requires participants to respond to a post, respond to each other's posts, personalize their "My Page," and engage in a live chat. I have a link to our class role play as well.
  

The prezi, my screencasts, and the youtube videos are intended to show faculty some of the other tools at their disposal. There are so many tools I don't even cover in the presentation, but I left faculty some of the low-hanging fruit to discover on their own (i.e. the googles: docs, calendar, and sites). We plan a follow-up to the in-service during which time faculty share which of these tools they have tried, their results, and what they plan to do differently/the same in the future. I will also begin implementing some of these tools more regularly, such as wikis for signing up for reviews of student evaluations, screencasts for demonstrating new technology, online calendaring, etc.